


Three Nightmares

by MrProphet



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 23:11:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10707117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	1. NIghtmare in Brine

Jack Sparrow woke with a start when the cold, salt water started soaking into his shirt. He sat up sharply, overbalanced, tried to steady himself with a hand on the mattress, missed and plunged off the bed into three feet of unexpected ocean.

“Wha’?” he spluttered. “Who put water in my cabin?” He stumbled to his feet, splashing wildly in the water until he found his hat. As water lapped around his chest, he realised that whoever it was they were still pouring the water in under the door.

Jack pushed against the current to reach the offending door and pushed against it, but the weight of water on the other side held it fast. Jack pushed again; then he pulled. He rattled the door wildly backwards and forwards, muttering a string of curses against all truculent modes of entry and egress.

“And a pox on all French windows!” he finished savagely. He did a double take. “Window!”

He turned and struggled to the porthole. He reached for the frame, but a face bumped against the glass and he recoiled violently. A pair of cold, black eyes stared in at him: A shark.

“Oh. Hello beastie,” Jack muttered. The water was almost up to his neck. A bottle bumped against his side. He picked it up and pulled the cork. “Well; here’s to the ocean.”

He tipped up the bottle and a flood of sea water poured out and forced his head under the surface. He cast the bottle aside and struggled for the surface; there was not much air left.

With a dull crack the shark slammed into the porthole, smashing in the glass.

Jack drew his knife and dived into the water.


	2. Nightmare in Grass

Waves of green and gold stretched away from Jack as far as the eye could see. Waves on waves, as the wind rippled the long grasses which covered the undulating hills. To the east lay a great forest, to the north he could just about discern the misty tops of distant mountains; to the west he could make out the towers of some magnificent city and to the south the grasslands continued unabated to the horizon.

Everything was lush and green; the air was cool and fresh with the scents of grass and flowers. There was no blue save the shimmer of the bright, summer sky, no salt tang on the air.

“Why is the sea gone?” Jack demanded irritably.

There was no answer but the twitter of swallows.

Jack began to run, down the hill and up the next, but the view that greeted him was always the same; an unbroken vista of land.

“This  _must_  be hell,” he muttered.

He ran faster and faster, until at last he tripped, fell and tumbled down a steep hillside towards green and mossy rocks.


	3. Nightmare in Silk

Jack found the gold on a desert island, buried in the sand just like in the stories he never believed when he heard them. He bought a new ship with the money and hardly noticed the cost. What possessed him to buy a house he was never quite sure.

He bought more ships just to do  _something_  to reduce his pile, but that backfired and before he knew what was happening he had the most successful merchant fleet outside of the East India Company. He turned to drink and found that even drinking was less fun when the rum was never gone.

When that happened, Jack was sure that the law would catch up with him, but suddenly is seemed that he was above the law. Wealth made him, if not respectable, then a desirable enough asset to the economy that people were prepared to overlook his murky past.

And then one day, disaster struck. A troop of soldiers came to his house, escorting a bewigged functionary who spoke the dreaded words: “Your country needs you, Captain Sparrow. His Majesty asks that you take up the vacant post of Governor in Port Royal.”

And it snowballed from there, until at last he found himself standing before the altar with a well-to-do girl by his side and a pompous ass of a priest asking him if he took this woman and so on and so forth.

And he said: “Yes.”


End file.
